


219 Baker Street

by The_Whip_Hand_81, Winged_Writer



Category: Benedict Cumberbatch - Fandom, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock (TV) RPF
Genre: 219 Baker Street, 221B Baker Street, Comedy, F/M, Gen, Original Character(s), Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, The game is on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1437358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Whip_Hand_81/pseuds/The_Whip_Hand_81, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winged_Writer/pseuds/Winged_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anise Stewart has lived in 219 Baker Street for four years and has had it up to here with all the news cameras and reporters knocking on her door for exclusive interviews about her world famous next door neighbor, Sherlock Holmes. She has never met him up until this week when she is involved in a tragic murder mystery inside Speedy's Cafe.<br/>The arrogant Sherlock Holmes is on the case, much to Anise's dismay, but soon she will be at the very heart of the investigation when the murder mystery comes to her door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 3 in the works!

[](http://s90.photobucket.com/user/julie9481/media/bakerst1.jpg.html) [](http://s90.photobucket.com/user/julie9481/media/bakerst2.jpg.html) [](http://s90.photobucket.com/user/julie9481/media/bakerst3.jpg.html)

It is 10:30am on a Monday morning when Anise Stewart walks out of her flat on 219 Baker Street and headed a few feet away to Speedy’s Café. Passing 221 Baker St., she quickly rolls her eyes to herself. In the four years Anise has lived on Baker Street, she has seen her fill of explosions, constant news reporters, and ambulances and police cars on her once quiet block. It is a nightmare being the next-door neighbor to the World’s Only Consulting Detective, Sherlock Holmes. Nearly every day someone knocks on her door or rings her doorbell to ask her exclusive questions about living next door to a living legend. She usually slams the door in their faces and huffs her way back upstairs to her 2nd floor flat in anger. No matter how many times she tells these journalists that she’s never formally met Holmes, no one listens and assumes she knows him personally. However, Anise does know John Watson, Holmes’ assistant and flat mate. She had no choice actually since that time Sherlock decided he was bored and shot 8 rounds into his wall sending bullets into her apartment living room wall next door. John was so apologetic and kind as to pay for the damage a bored Sherlock created. Since then, Anise and John have tea at least once a week at Speedy’s – when business in solving crimes is slow, that is. Though John is quite a guy, she is sure that Sherlock is no picnic according to what she reads in the papers and watches on the news and interviews with the detective in the funny hat. She does know that if she ever got the chance to speak with this Sherlock fellow she’d definitely give him a piece of her mind. Why with all the gunshots in her living room wall, the weird smells seeping through her apartment walls from his, the crazy hours he plays that damned violin leaving her with no sleep for work – it’s bound to drive anyone mad! 

Anise walks passed 221 Baker Street and stops in front of Speedy’s to check her cell for a text from John. He usually texts her if he’d be running late for tea but nothing. She shuts off the screen to her phone and checks her reflection in the dark screen. She wipes away a lipstick smudge on her chin and fixes her long auburn hair on her shoulders before entering. She enters Speedy’s and finds the barrel of a gun pointing between her eyes at close range. A large frame man wearing a mask is holding the other end, his twitchy hand frightening her even more than the metal pointed at her head. 

Anise gasps in terror as the store manager, Mario, yells, “Please! Please don’t hurt her – she’s good people! Just take the money, take anything you want!” 

As Anise begins to weep to herself, the large gunman’s eyes seemed sympathetic as he swiftly spun around to Mario and effortlessly shot him between the eyes. Anise screams as the gunman clumsily trips over his own feet and makes a run for it, leaving money and valuables behind. Anise collapses to the tiled floor in a fit of sobs as she quickly crawls over to the now dead owner of Speedy’s Café. She lifts his head and rests it on her folded knees. Within moments, John Watson runs into the café, stopping short at the door, shocked. He runs over to Anise holding Mario’s head.

“Anise, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me, dear,” he gently whispers as he takes her by the wrist.

“B-but we can’t just leave him. We can’t leave him alone!” she sobs coming to her feet, slipping and sliding over Mario’s pooled blood. 

John wrapped his arm around his frantic neighbor’s shoulders, “I know but the police are on their way. This is a crime scene now…” they exit the café into the now crowded sidewalk filled with onlookers and first responder cops. 

Minutes later, Detective Inspector Lestrade is on the scene with Phillip Anderson and his forensic team. Off to the side, John explains to Lestrade that Anise is not just any witness but a neighbor and a friend of his so he requests if anyone had to question her down at the station, he volunteered himself to do the questioning. Lestrade relented and sent John and Anise in a squad car to headquarters to be questioned about the morning. 

**

Inside the dimly lit concrete room, Anise sits at a long wooden table, her mascara streaked down her cheeks from her hysterical crying all morning. John sits across from her, his hands folded on top of the table, sadness in his eyes, but professionalism in his voice. 

He lets out a long sigh, “Anise…I know how difficult this is for you. It’s difficult for me, too. Mario is – was a great man, but…you are going to have to gather enough strength to tell me what happened so the police can find his murderer.”

Anise broke down into a weeping fit again. John stands up and walks out of the interrogation room and into a room behind the two-way mirror where Lestrade and Sherlock watched on. 

“When did you get in?” John asks Sherlock who is staring at Anise through the glass. 

“I was summoned here…seems like Scotland Yard can’t get details out of a demure little woman. You have to be tough with people in times like these. You can’t let them walk all over you. Where John fails, I succeed,” Sherlock brushes passed an offended John and into the interrogation room. 

He confidently enters the room in his long trench coat, scarf still tied around his neck and pulls off his gloves, “My name is Sherlo- “

Cutting him off mid sentence and without meeting his eye, Anise annoyingly grumbled, “I know who you are. You’re Sherlock Holmes, famous detective and pretentious arsehole.” 

Sherlock stands silently then continues into the room to sit across from her, “Correct. Now, tell me what you saw.”

Anise sits still in her chair, her eyes in a daze, lips tight, her sad eyes slowly burning into a rage.

He presses on more firmly, raising his voice with each sentence, “Anything at all? You were there, weren’t you? You were there to witness Mario get shot, yes? Lets have it then. Tell me what happened! Tell me what you saw!” He found in the past that asking in this manner gets a rise out of people to quickly answer in fear.

She screams in fury, “SOD OFF, YOU INHUMAN PRICK!” 

A knock comes from behind the glass and Sherlock walks out of the room and behind the glass. 

“Not all people respond well to being pressured and yelled at during questioning, Sherlock. She watched a man die, for God’s sake. Have some compassion,” John directs his partner. 

Minutes later, Sherlock returns to the interrogation room where Anise still sits, her anger slightly diminished. Sherlock walks over to Anise and awkwardly places an orange blanket around her shoulders and walks to his chair to sit down. Anise lifts her head and gives him a weird look, “What’s this?” touching the fabric.

He sighs, “It’s a blanket.”

“I see that. What for?” 

Sherlock shrugs, “Don’t know. I’ve been told blankets help in times of shock. Whatever that means.”

Anise whips off the blanket, “I’m not in shock!” 

“Then what are you?” 

“I’m pissed off is what I am! A decent human being was killed in front of my eyes today and everyone’s questioning me instead of looking for who did it!” 

Sherlock tents his fingers underneath his chin, “Did you do it?”

Anise throws the blanket at Sherlock and yells incredulously, “How dare you ask me that!” 

John enters the room to keep the peace, “All right, Sherlock.”

“All right, what? It is a simple question with a simple answer, yes or no,” he calmly responds.

Anise stands up, seething, “You are really something else, you know that? You think you can walk in here and introduce yourself thinking that just because I hear your name I’d come undone and answer your questions? Treating me like a child and criminal all at once? You have no manners, sir, you are truly inhuman.”

“Well, I beg to differ.”

“Do you? You didn’t even ask me my name. You just waltz in here shooting off at the hip accusing me of murder,” she sits down again, John now standing at her side in case of another outburst. 

Sherlock rolls his eyes, “Fine. What is your name?”

She shifts in her seat, “…My name is Anise Stewart.”

Sherlock crinkles his nose, “Anise isn’t a name, it’s a spice.”

“And Sherlock isn’t a name, it’s…stupid!” They both begin squabbling. 

John jumps in, “All right, children. Enough! Anise, just answer his questions. Sherlock, just…stop being a dick.” 

Both Sherlock and Anise slowly settle back into their chairs as the long day of questioning begins. Anise finally told Sherlock everything she witnessed: the large framed man with a gun pointed at her face, the description of the man as best as she could remember, the smell of Mario’s blood on her hands. Everything. By the time the interview was over, seven hours had passed and she was free to go. John offered her a car to drive her back home but she refused. 

Anise picked up take away from a Chinese restaurant by the precinct and walked home to Baker St. She arrived at her building’s front door and looked to her right a few feet away watching police officers and forensics still at Speedy’s. She pushes her key into the lock and notices Sherlock Holmes arriving at his front door, pushing the key into the lock. 

Sore feelings from earlier aside, she joked over to him, “Oi! Long time, no see, eh?”

Sherlock looks over to her with a quizzical expression, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

Anise stomps her foot, angrily and shouted back, “We just spent 7 hours in interrogation together! Christ!” 

He stares blankly back at her and shakes it off, “Apologies, my brain deletes unnecessary information once the task is done. Good evening,” and enters his building, shutting the door.

“My God,” Anise says to herself, “he really is an arsehole.” She steps into her building and closes the door behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

It is 3am when Anise is awoken from a nightmare about Mario being shot. She was awoken by Sherlock’s violin playing. The loud muffles of screeching strings, almost sounds like a cat crying every few bars throughout the song. She rises from her bed, shuffles into the living room and walks over to the patched up spot on the wall where the bullets broke through all those years ago. She pounds her fist on the patched up work as hard as she could. 

“I’m trying to sleep over here!” she yells through the wall. The violin stops; complete silence. 

She sighs and walks away when the violin begins playing Brahm’s “Lullaby”. Anise stands at the center of her living room and says to herself, “Funny. Very funny.” She walks back into her bedroom. 

**

A dreary rainy Tuesday morning, the rain falling like buckets outside Anise’s office window in Soho. She wanted to return to work the next day to avoid thinking too much about the murder. Working always helps Anise deal with personal hardships, it keeps her focused on living and passes the time without tears. 

Anise sits at her desk staring mindlessly at her computer screen. She is supposed to be doing a stock report but she’s not in the mood for numbers. She adjusts her computer glasses on her face when an instant message pops up on her screen.

“Hello, love.”

Anise perks up and smiles, she types back, “Hello, Jeffrey. I’ve been awaiting your message. I can’t wait to see you tonight.” Jeffrey, her steady boyfriend of three months, usually sends her messages throughout the mornings to keep her awake and amused while working. 

She continues to type, “I really need to see you. I can’t wait to be in my Jeffrey’s arms.”

He responded, “This is not Jeffrey.”

She pauses, “Who is this?”

“You were supposed to be dead.”

Anise pushes her chair away from her desk, alarmed.

“He was supposed to kill you, too.”

Anise stands up and quickly types back, “Who the Hell is this? What kind of sick joke is this?”

“If you want a job done right, you’ve got to do it yourself, I suppose.”

Anise straightens up again, staring at the computer screen, “What the f-“

Bullets crash through her office window behind her like hail as she ducks down behind and crawls behind her desk. Bullets shattering picture frames, furniture, and books as coworkers outside her office scramble for safety. In seconds, all the noise ceases. All that is audible to Anise is a high-pitched beep in her ears imbedded into her ear canal from all the noise. She is cowering at the corner of her desk as coworkers rush in to see if she was still alive. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. People hovering over her, asking her questions she couldn’t hear, her heart pounding like a tribal drum took over the high-pitched sound in her ears. 

Shortly, Detective Inspector Lestrade arrives on the scene with Sherlock and John not too far behind. Anise is relocated to another part of the building toward the back of the building where private meetings take place. After Sherlock inspects her damaged office and the trajectory of where the gunshots came from, he enters the room to join Anise and John.

Anise shivers as she tries to sip from her cup of tea, holding it in both hands. She looks up at Sherlock, “What, no blankets?”

“Now you want a blanket? Just yesterday you thought it ridiculous,” he responds.

“Yesterday I wasn’t shot at and rained on! I’m flipping freezing,” she shivers as John wraps his coat around her. 

Anise places her cup on the table as her lower lip quivered, “Who is trying to kill me, Mr. Holmes?”

Sherlock stands at one end of the long table and leans forward, his hands on the table, “I don’t know, Denise. You are going to have to let us into your flat for further investigation.”

“It’s Anise and serious?” she groans.

“As a bullet to the brain…” he realizes his choice of words, “or a heart attack.”

John further explains, “Unfortunately, in order to find out who is behind Mario’s murder and the attempt on your life, we have to do some digging around into your personal life. Narrow down suspects, rule out potential ones.”

Anise sighs, “So, that means you have to actually come into my home and be looky-loos?” 

Sherlock responds with a “Yup” with the ‘p’ popping at the end. 

“…Great,” she lowers her head in defeat.

“Don’t worry, Lanise – “

“Anise.”

“You won’t even notice we’re in your home,” Sherlock heads for the door, spins around once more to face her, “You don’t mind violin playing, do you? It helps to think.” He winks and leaves the room.

John and Anise both sigh and say at the same time, “God help me.”

**


End file.
